Thirty-Four

THE THIRST FOR GOD AND THE CORROSIVE WATERS

We have said that after the preparation and whittling down, the essence of the wet path consists in directly provoking, artificially or violently, the separation so that it is not ego (Gold) that is to liberate Life (Mercury), but it is Life that must liberate the ego and cure its leprosy.

For that we may employ the technique of elevating the forces of the same desire to an abnormal intensity, but directed elsewhere. The premise in this case is set forth by Boehme, who says that "hunger" is the principle both of corporeal birth and of rebirth, being that which impels toward the body and impels toward eternity.¹

Hence Gichtel says, "Everything comes down to the conversion of our Soul and the direction of our 'desire’ inwardly, to desire and never cease desiring God until Sophia and the Holy Spirit meet the desire . . . The perpetual "hunger" of the obsolete body serves as fertilizing manure: it exhausts everything to the point of disgust and anguish until it is constrained to turn to the Father."² He continues with some interesting technical allusions: "The magical or magnetic desire of the soul’s will is the architect and creator of what the soul has conceived in its imagination, that is, of the noble and gentle Light of God³ . . . Under the powerful desire of prayer, the soul is enflamed with a clear light, which triumphantly causes the celestial Virgin to ascend . . . The Fire [of the inner man in desire] swallows up this celestial presence of the Light, which the soul imagines yearningly, attracts to itself and makes manifest—then burns clearly, producing, in the heart, a beautiful, clear Light."⁴ Here images work as "transformers" in a transcendent sense, with regard to states of deep emotion concentrated in the release of the fire of desire.

In the Book of Ostanes we find: "When the love for the Magnum Opus penetrated my heart and the work’s preoccupation drove sleep from my eyes; when its preoccupation kept me from eating and drinking to the point of emaciating my body and I appeared to be in an alarming state, prayer and fasting finally delivered me" to what followed. In the form of a vision, as the first of a series of experiences the author speaks of a being who leads the alchemist to seven doors, just as Gichtel says God introduced his spirit into the seven centers.⁵

Cyliani speaks of the state in which "one has lost everything and has no more hope" and when "life is a reproach and death a duty"⁶—in the same way sui juris non esse [based on some law outside oneself] the disgust for the world, death of the free will, hastiness to renounce, total submission, and faith, of which the mystics speak, can themselves be considered useful and practical elements for the Work, if one lacks the capacity to make the separation oneself (the dry path) but still longs for the supernal, having the center of self in the "Waters," in the viscous "Soul," in which the self must be used up.⁷

On the other hand, we already know that all this can be justified hermetically only by the standard of the very real effects that can follow initiation, and not by moral or religious values; so, if the results are the same, we can also turn to other methods, which to the eyes of the profane may present quite a different character.

Such may be the violent forms of orgiastic ecstasy among the Cybellenes, Dionysians, or Maenads, who, under certain conditions, are brought to self-transcendence and violence to themselves by evoking elemental forces.⁸ We can refer further to what in hermetism are called Corrosive Waters (or poison), in the special sense of substances capable of artificially provoking the dissociation between different elements of the human composition. The texts, nevertheless, either advise against the use of these waters and "violent Fires," or recommend the utmost precaution because, they say, they burn rather than wash; they dissolve bodies but cannot save spirits; they work not with the "slow fire of nature" but with the "impatient haste that proceeds from the Devil." Their action is abrupt and discontinuous—so the difficulty of keeping them active in the changing state is all the greater.

In this order of things, Greek texts have indicated the use of magic herbs—βοτάναι. For the most part, we must refer to the ancient traditions concerning the "sacred" or "immortality-conferring" drinks, like the soma of the Vedas, the haoma of the Iranians, the mead of the Eddas and even wine itself.

Originally it was a question of symbols: the holy drink was the Ether of Life, the principle of exaltation and inner regeneration, which to come into contact with was for man a much likelier possibility in the beginning than it was in later times. For the tradition maintains that at a certain point in time, such a drink ceased to be "known" and something else was substituted for it, which was no longer just a symbol, but a real drink composed of substances adapted to produce a psychophysical state constituting a favorable condition for the spirit to be able to realize the true and immaterial soma, haoma, etc. In the hermetic use of the βοτάναι one of these artificial means to reach an exaltation or inebriation was probably thought to be a means of arriving at an effective ecstasy.

The same can be said of that which, in more disconcerting jargon in some alchemical texts, goes by the name of urina vini, meaning "urine of a drunken man."⁹ "Urine" is explained by the root ur, which in Chaldean designated fire (Latin, urere, "to burn") and with the anagram UR Inferioris NAturae,¹⁰ which is precisely the humid Fire agent in these methods. Specifically, "urine of a drunken man" alludes to the state of exaltation, "inebriation," or "enthusiasm"—μανία—which is linked to one of the manifestations of such Fire. When others add that the urine must be "infantile" and "prepubertal," they allude to the condition of simplicity and purity (or of elementarity, the "nascent state") that must be maintained in such "combustion," that it produces that "movement or impetuosity of the spirit" and that "inspiration" that are the only things—and not reason, reading, or study—that can effect, as Geber says, the discovery of the secret.

Let us make mention at this point of the frequent references to wine in the most recent texts, starting with Raymond Lully, and repeat that here it may be either symbolic wine or actual wine, or both at the same time. We shall cite but one text: "It is a wonderful thing, and to the vulgar incredible, that the spirit of the wine extracted from its body [a question of capturing the subtle aspect of the experience provided by wine] has the power, by dint of its continuous circulating movement, to extract . . . any other spirit from its body: be it vegetable [], mineral [] or animal []. . . . The Quinta-virtus-essentia-prima of Vinum attracts the vires [powers, virilities] of all beings infused in it; loosening them from the elements through dissolution of the natural ties; enabling the spirits, by appetence and reaction, to elevate themselves above the passive resistances."¹¹

And is it not significant that the word aquavit, "firewater," (i.e., "brandy," aqua ignea) aims so directly at the experiences of the alchemists and can also signify that other ancient designation, aqua vitae or "Water of Life," or "burning water"?

It might be helpful to emphasize that in the use of the corrosive waters (as well as in the "Path of Venus," which we shall discuss presently) the fundamental condition is the preparation of the androgynous element: "The secret of the success of the operation is the secret double fire." This means that the operation must connect its activity, beginning with the incombustible Sulfur, for the empowerment, in some external fashion to the substances used and to maintain connection to the end. It is in this sense that we speak of the "Philosopher’s Wine," as opposed to ordinary wine, also called aqua ardens, and in commenting on the recipe of Raymond Lully, recipe vinum rubeum album (spiritus vini philosophorum), we say that the preliminary condition is the secret fire.¹² In all other cases, that is, in the case of a passive experience, the sole result will be the phenomenology, utterly devoid of any interest to us, of ''artificial paradises" and of those who abuse alcohol or drugs. As Titus Burckhardt has aptly remarked,¹³ a drug as such can only prepare or encourage the attainment of a spiritual state, it cannot engender it. Its action must be directed and integrated; the "qualitative" compulsion knows only how to come from another domain.¹⁴